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Although I do not eat out all that often, I like to keep an eye on the restaurant scene here in Toronto and a new comer, Porchetta & Co recently caught my attention. Not surprisingly they specialize in porchetta and with all of the rave reviews they were getting I had to pay them a visit and try out their porchetta sandwich. Porchetta is an Italian style of roast pork that is seasoned with spices and slowly roasted until tender. Fattier cuts of pork are often used for porchetta and it is common to wrap everything up in a pork belly. All of this fat does two things for the roast, the first being that it keeps the roast nice and moist even through all of the roasting and it adds a ton of flavour. The final component of the porchetta is that the outer part of the pork belly gets nice and crispy and it is referred to as the crackling. Porchetta & Co definitely have their porchetta down and the sandwich was amazing! This of course inspired me to try making porchetta at home.

Luckily Porchetta & Co describe their porchetta pretty well so all that was required was coming up with the amounts in the recipe and getting to roasting. Well, before we get to roasting we actually want to marinate the pork shoulder and apply a dry rub to the pork belly and let to develop their flavours for at least 24 hours. Once the pork has had a chance build up some flavour the roast is assembled and thrown into the oven, first at a high temperature to get the outside nice and crispy and then low and slow until the roast is fully cooked. This was actually my first time working with a pork belly and I have to say that I am quite pleased with the results. The porchetta certainly did come out nice and moist and tender and full of flavour. I served the porchetta with a dollop of grainy mustard and a side of braised rapini or broccoli rabe. Now I am definitely looking forward to some porchetta sandwiches and enjoying the leftovers in other ways!

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I had a Porchetta sandwich at Roli Roti in San Francisco.... Words cannot describe its deliciousness.... The crispy skin was like the thickest potato chip EVAR! They served it on what looked like a wheat ciabatta roll with caramelized onions and arugula. When I saw your post, I nearly keeled over. I see my very own, homemade Porchetta in my very very near future!!! Thanks for this post!

Sounds great! I recently made Pollo in Porchetta (Chicken in the style of Pork)in a class in NYC, taught by the incredidibly knowledgable Gina Sarnataro. It was fun and amazingly yummy and moist. Goes to show that you don't need a lot of fancy techniques and ingredients to make something taste good.

photos on your's blog are dengerous! i'm visiting this site from months. The worst idea is to watch this pictures at night. I'm becoming so hungry that i could eat whole fritge before sleep! You are great inspiration for me as a photographer and cooker! Huge greatings from Poland!

I'd really like to try this recipe, but I need some clarification, if you would:When I get ppork belly it is offered in a 'chunk' of about 3-5 lbs., 2 or 3 inches high x 6 or so wide by 4-6 deep...Do you get my drift: how am I supposed to butcher this chunk to get something that will wrap a shoulder?How is your pork belly butchered?

Pardon me if I'm not understanding something here, but this recipe is really not making sense to me.Thanks for replying

Bean: I got a pork shoulder that was about 4 pounds that I cut roughly in half to create a into a cylinder about 3 inches in diameter and 12 inches long. The pork belly that I got was also 12 inches across and it was 24 inches long and about 1 1/2 inches thick. I needed about 20 inches of the pork belly to fully wrap the pork shoulder. If the pork belly was 2-3 inches thick it would definitely be too thick to wrap around the pork shoulder.

When I lived in Minneapolis I had a roommate from Northern Minnesota that raved about this pork roast called, "porketta". She said you could only buy it up North and she'd never seen it anywhere else. After visiting her family one time and she brought one back from the grocery store to cook for us. It really was spelled "porketta" on the package, and it really was delicious. I have never heard of it anywhere else, but I'm glad that I could recreate that taste myself without flying to Northern Minnesota. It was so flavorful and moist.

Anonymous: I have seen a few versions where the pork belly is skipped. You may want to replace it with something like bacon, pancetta or prosciutto to help ensure that the pork stays nice and moist and it will also add even more flavour.

Anonymous: I normally get my meat at the Saint Lawrence Market. Some of the butchers carry small pieces of pork belly and there is a sausage place, Sausage King it think, that is where I got the full pork belly, though you have to ask for it.

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I came to realize that my meals were boring and that I had been eating the same few dishes over and over again for years. It was time for a change! I now spend my free time searching for, creating and trying tasty new recipes in my closet sized kitchen.